Relief Chalk Art Poster

Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Creating my own art for my home is something that gives me the perfect excuse to experiment with different techniques and today I am sharing my masking glue experiment, which also gave me an excuse to get out the art materials from the days of GCSE project work!

I started with the phrase/wording that I wanted to be predominant on the paper - I'd overheard this on TV the other day and thought it would be perfect, so sketched a handwriting style, traced with Sharpie to use as my template, but you can easily use a print-out or photocopy of text, patterns or drawings that you would like to use:

Next, straight on to creating the relief on your print paper.

I picked up this bottle of masking fluid in HobbyCraft:

Before heading straight into using the glue to trace the handwriting, I wanted to get a quick feel

for how easily the glue was to use with a paintbrush and what to expect in terms of coats and

drying time, so made a quick star pattern on paper:

A healthy coating was required - if your text/pattern is fine, I'd recommend layering,
rather than loading your paintbrush - it took only 5 minutes to dry, into a sheen:

I then added a stripe of blue paint to the top and then used water to graduate in an ombre effect
to the bottom:

The masking glue stops the paint transferring:

....and once the paint is dry, the masking glue can be removed.
It peels away easily and leaves a relief effect:

Time to start the print. Using the pen template underneath, I traced the text:

I went one word at a time, layering the masking glue as I went and left to dry completely:

...and the Sun made an appearance to help!

Next, on to the background colour. Or colours. I couldn't decide, so went all out for a rainbow effect, using artists pastels as they are easy to blend, but highly pigmented to create a high impact of colour:

As using pastels is different to the fluidity of paint, when hitting areas of the masking glue,

I was careful not to use the pastel directly over the top [this could remove it], instead using

my finger to smudge the colour around the glue:

...or enlisting the help of cotton buds to help create an even distribution of colour:

Once complete, the masking glue can be removed:

For this, I used tweezers to help, slowly peeling from one end of text to the other:

....until completely removed, revealing a relief text print:

Ready to hang:

[with my favourite, washi tape]:

I'm going to be using this technique to create some more subtle and larger prints - I'm thinking graduated pastel backgrounds with flocks of birds made from the masking fluid - I'll let you know how it goes. If you've ever fancied having an experiment with this technique, do try it - I used such a small amount of the masking fluid, it's going to last for many a DIY!